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r\V,TOWNS WHERE THE LECTURE IS DELIVERED, 
OR POSTPAID, TEX C3NTS 

\s originally delivered in Waco, Texas. 
ite nogrftpn icaH y reported and revised. 

REPLg to 1/NGERSOLL 










\7l*~ 



By SAMUEL COL-CORD 



P ublished by m fM. HAUPTMANN 



O 



.442 Columbus Avenue, New York 



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Ur^VVO ^ouu^Vo ,°l % 



(Or. Colcord's Lecture Erjf&gerrjents 

The remarkable popular reception given to Mr. Colcord's lectures, 
wherever delivered, as well as the fine results following in added strength 
to Christian sentiment, especially commend them to the lecture committees 
of Y. M. C. Associations, Christian Endeavor Local Unions, Epworth 
League Societies, Winter and Summer Assemblies, and others having the 
making of lecture arrangements. 

In "Waco, Texas, where this lecture was first delivered extempora- 
neously in the Y. M. C. A. hall, it was twice repeated by request to 
great audiences in the Grand Opera House, and in the city of New 
York, where next delivered in new form, it was given in Chickering Hall, 
Tuesday Evening, January 17, J 899, for the twenty-fifth time in the me- 
tropolis within two months. 

Correspondence looking to the delivery in other cities and towns of 
this lecture, in revised and improved form, under the title of ** Fallacies 
of Ingersoll," and also of Mr. Colcord's newest lecture, ** Failure of Ag- 
nosticism," may be directed to 

....WM; HAUPTMANN, 
O^OO 442 Columbus Avenue, Ne c w York City. 



...Press mi Personal Notices... 

(Not the best culled from hundreds, but extracts from all known references to the New 
York Lecture to date.) 

Mr. Colcord at first objected to the publication of these com- 
mendations, but waives objection on the ground that they 
may help to circulate the truth. 

£be IRew H>ork Xecture 

" Dr. Colcord was a lecturer at Chickering Hall for seven years and 
always talked to crowded houses. He is a natural orator of great power 
and is apt at repartee, as was shown when he quieted his interrupters on. 
Sunday last." — New York World, December 17, 1898. 

"Best popular answer yet made. It meets and out-laughs and Jout- 
satirizes the rhetorical agnostic on his own ground." — Dr. Carlos Mai - 
TYN, Author, Lecturer, etc. / 

"A masterful criticism, . . . exceedingly interesting. It stirrralated 
both thought and laughter." — Brooklyn Times (N. Y.). 

" Admirable lecture! I know of no reply to Mr. Ingersoll that ap- 
proaches it in its effective disclosure of the great infidel's fallacies." — JOSEPH 
B. Clark, D.D., Secretary Congregational Home Missionary Society. 

"Brilliant and effective lecture. ... Its spirit is excellent and it bris- 
tles with effective points. . . . Pressed home with much force and occa- 
sionally with much wit." — 7'lie Independent^ New York. 



y 4 



T & 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

(Stenographically Reported arid Revised.) 



I. 

Some Preliminaries. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : I am not here this evening 
to establish the grounds of the Christian faith ; nor am 
I here to deliver to yon a lecture on the evidences of 
Christianity. The foundations of the Christian reli- 
gion are so broad and founded so deep in the researches 
of scholarship that I do not for a moment pretend to the 
competence to properly discuss them ; nor would there 
be time to give more than a hint of the impregnable 
position of the Christian religion in the foundations of 
reason. 

Nor am I here to unravel the mysteries of divinity, 
or the deep unsearchable things in the Bible which we 
call the word of God. 

A fool may ask a question which a philosopher can 
not answer, and as my questioners are not fools and I 
am not a philosopher, I am frank to confess that there 
are in the Scriptures, there are in the great truths of 
the Christian religion, much which I do not fully com- 
prehend; much which I could not satisfactorily ex- 
plain to my own mind, much less to yours. 

I have been invited to repeat an address which I 
made to the Young Men's Christian Association a week 
ago to-day, and there is presented to me no easy task. 

Copyright, 1898, by Samuel Colcord. 



2 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

It is one thing for a man to express his thoughts fresh 
from the heart and brain ; it is another to try to recall 
and to present forcibly and satisfactorily again what 
was presented first in an entirely extemporaneous ad- 
dress, excepting the four closing sentences. 

The pastors of our churches are too busy to give 
time to the discussion of questions like this, and their 
work is too important for them to turn aside from it 
to answer a lecture such as that which I presume to 
criticise. 

Now and then some resourceful man, like Dr. Car- 
roll, may take an hour aside from the more pressing and 
important duties of his office and make reply, which he 
did last Sunday afternoon in an address, the first fifteen 
minutes of which completely wrecked the lecture of 
Colonel Ingersoll and tore his platform into so many 
splinters that it would be exceedingly uncomfortable 
for a free thinker to sit down upon it. (Laughter.) 

But as I am fifteen years out of the active work of 
the ministry, a plain business man, and in that sense at 
least a man of the world, busy with the perplexing and 
difficult cares of every-day life, but with time that I 
may call my own, if I care (my work not being so im- 
portant, my time not so precious) to devote a little of it 
to the lecture of Colonel Ingersoll, it is my privilege to 
do so. 

I address you simply as a layman and a business 
man, one of yourselves, claiming no especial authority, 
no authority in fact but the authority of reason, to which 
you all appeal, and not attempting this evening even to 
appeal to the authority of the Bible, though I recognize 
it ; but remembering that there are many before me 
who do not, I appeal to an authority to which you and I 
alike submit. 

I wish to say in the beginning that if I use the term 
" infidel" I do not apply it to the great Hebrew race, a 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 3 

race that has given to the world many of its most bril- 
liant leaders in the realm of science, in literature, in 
scholarship, in statesmanship and finance ; a race deeply 
religions, and though not recognizing my historical 
Christ, yet looking by faith to a Messiah that is to come. 

I have no quarrel with an infidel as such. An infi- 
del has his uses, and I believe that even Colonel Inger- 
soll is an exceedingly useful man. 

By assault, by the most rigid investigation, by the 
most terrible criticism has Christianity come into the' 
open light of reason, to be accepted by the scholarship 
of the age ; and the way to faith is by a path strewn not 
only with the flowers of love and hope, but with the 
rugged thorns of doubt. (Applause.) 

It was my privilege a few evenings since to sit where 
you now are sitting and listen to the lecture of Colonel 
Ingersoll on the " Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child," 
and to that I will give attention this evening. For 
his eloquence, his brilliant wit, his genius for oratory 
I have admiration, and for the good qualities of his 
nature I have profound respect. 

He is not by any means a logician. He is pre-emi- 
nently weak in logic, but possessed of a marvellous 
amount of ready wit and powers of beautiful expression. 

He is a lawyer, and nothing if not a lawyer, skilled 
in the art to make the worse appear the better cause by 
eloquence ; and as a lawyer, concealing the evil in the 
character of his criminal client, and enlarging upon his 
good qualities, presents him to the sympathy of the 
jury, so he clothes the criminal, infidelity, in the radiant 
garments of the angel, liberty. 

His methods are peculiar. He presents some pas- 
sage or some statement or doctrine of the Bible, not as 
it is presented there, but in his own way to make it fit 
for his own uses, distorting it, constructing a man of 
straw which he easily knocks over, and commands the 



4 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

applause of his audience ; and, pouring his ridicule and 
contempt upon the being of his own creation, holds it 
up to the scorn of his hearers. 

I remember to have read some years ago his lecture 
entitled " The Mistakes of Moses," in which he pursued 
from beginning to end the methods which I have de- 
scribed; and the result of it all was to present in a 
most marvellous way to an intelligent mind, and one 
informed on the subjects of which he was treating, not 
the mistakes of Moses, but the ludicrous mistakes of 
Colonel Ingersoll. (Laughter.) Yet, to one unin- 
formed it carried with it the power of conviction. 

The other evening I saw the young men in his audi- 
ence, intelligent, bright, progressive, thinking young 
men; the men of the future destined to become the 
men of power in the years to come, but young men 
evidently ignorant of the Bible; intelligent on other 
subjects, but ignorant of religion. Before such men 
he utters sentiments so beautiful and so beautifully ex- 
pressed as to captivate the hearts of all his hearers. 
His beautiful sentiments I fully endorse and you can 
hear them every Sunday from all the Christian pulpits 
of this town. (Laughter.) But he put them in the 
wrong relation. The Christian doctrines of love and 
mercy he made to appear the beautiful and exclusive 
property of infidelity in contrast with the severe doc- 
trine of divine justice as if it were all of Christian 
belief! Of course under such circumstances, infidelity 
appeared much the more charming. 

It is his habit to present some horror of belief held 
by some Christian fanatic of some hundreds of years 
ago, and telling his hearers that that is what Christians 
believe ; that is what the church teaches ; to pour his 
ridicule upon it and easily provoke the laugh, and the 
young man naturally says : " What an absurd book that 
Bible is ; I will not waste my time in reading it ! What 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 5 

ridiculous people these Christians are ! You will not 
find me attending any of their churches. 

If I should go away back into the centuries of the 
past and find some absurd declaration of some fanatic 
who also chanced to be an infidel, and should say, 
" That is what Colonel Ingersoll believes ; that is what 
infidelity teaches," he would say, and justly: "You 
falsifier, I do not believe any such thing, and you know 
I do not." And I say to Colonel Ingersoll: " I do not 
believe any such thing ; the Christian church does not 
believe any such thing, and you know or ought to know 
that we do not." 

When I saw the wrong done to the young men, to 
affect forever their future, not by honest argument but 
by the trickery of misrepresentation, in fields so unfa- 
miliar to many of them as to leave them utterly with- 
out defense, I felt my blood burn within me, and I re- 
solved to tear away the veil of sophistry and expose the 
trickery of his method. (Applause.) 

I am not here because the religion of Christ needs 
defense. I am here because I believe in fair play for 
the young man, and therefore I take issue with the dis- 
tinguished lecturer. 



II. 

Liberty. 

In a review of the lecture there are but three points 
to the discussion, or three questions; for, though the 
lecture rambles over much ground and is a somewhat 
confused mass of brilliant expressions, the issues which 
it presents, if it presents any, are these : Is infidelity 
or Christianity the greater friend of human liberty? On 
which side is the scholarship and the intellect of the 
age? Which is the better exemplar of love and human 
brotherhood? 

These are practical not metaphysical questions, and 
if I seem in parts of this address to be not over pro- 
found, let it be remembered that I am angling for fish 
seldom found in deep water although they are often in 
hot water. (Laughter.) I desire to meet the colonel 
on his own ground, or in his own waters, as it were. 
(Laughter.) 

In the lecture Friday night, the opening sentence 
of which was "Liberty is my religion," he so mis- 
represented the Bible and the Christian religion as to 
make them appear the enemies of liberty. He pre- 
sented pictures of persecution, horrors of torture, 
going back far into the past when the Christian church 
had not been so fully brought under the gentle and 
refining influences of Christian faith but that they were 
very much like other men of that age of intolerance, 
and solemnly presented that to his applauding hearers 
as the spirit of the Christian church. 

While listening to his plea for poor, persecuted in- 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 7 

fidelity, it needed only one look at the colonel's florid 
rotundity to convince the beholder that he certainly en- 
joyed a fair degree of liberty, unhampered by thumb- 
screw, rack, or dungeon, or even scant rations. (Laugh- 
ter.) Free to express his infidel beliefs or criticise or 
misrepresent the church, unhindered by man, woman, 
or child, the porpoise disporting in his native waters or 
the wild ass braying on the desert enjoyed not more 
liberty than he. (Laughter.) 

What, ladies and gentlemen, have the mistakes of 
Christian fanatics of generations ago to do, anyhow, 
with the burning, living questions of to-day? 

Is infidelity so weak in argument, so sorely pressed 
for reasons that it is necessary for its great champion, 
when he would attack the great living organism of 
Christianity, to ignore all the conditions of the present 
and go far into the past to find something then called 
Christian that he may attack? (Applause.) 

Shade of the great Hume! Shade of the mighty 
Voltaire ! Has it come to this in this end of the nine- 
teenth century, that the great apostle of infidelity, the 
man of eloquence, must go back and search the grave- 
yards of the past and exhume the dry bones of an effete 
fanaticism, and with the mucilage of his sophistry paste 
the bones together and reconstruct the skeleton and 
label it "Christian," that with the blunderbuss of his 
eloquence he may knock it down? (Applause.) 

I know of no Christian persecutions of to-day. I 
know not where I may find the Christian rack and the 
Christian thumbscrew. 

The only persecutions we know of in our day are 
when we read of some follower of Confucius or some 
disciple of Colonel Ingersoll's Brahmin God attacking 
some weak missionary, or the fierce Kurd followers of 
Mahommed massacring thousands of Christian Ar- 
menians. 



8 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

In the dark age of persecution, when the disciples of 
Christ were only beginning to learn the lesson of 
brotherhood and love that is the very essence of his 
teaching, when the church was marching to glorious 
achievement, wading through the blood of her martyrs, 
it was natural that oppression should be met with op- 
pression, cruelty with cruelty, and sometimes even tor- 
ture with torture ; but it is the glory of the Christian 
religion that the faith of Christ has so elevated the 
human race that has come under its influence, that the 
dark age has passed away, and the Christian church 
stands foremost in the defense of liberty, the foremost 
advocate of human brotherhood and help for the dis- 
tressed of mankind. (Applause.) 

History shows most of the so-called religious wars 
and persecutions to haye been political. Though 
directly opposed to the teachings of religion, it suited 
the exigencies of politicians to mask their purposes 
under her holy name. 

So also the sacred name of liberty was stolen by op- 
pression until Madame Roland, standing at the bloody 
guillotine of France, could exclaim, " Oh, Liberty, how 
many crimes are committed in thy name !" and I thought 
as I listened to the eloquent lecture on the " Liberty of 
Man, Woman, and Child" that there had again been 
stolen and degraded to very ignoble uses the holy name 
of Liberty. (Applause.) 

I might appeal to history to show how the progress 
of liberty has gone hand in hand with the progress of 
the Christian faith. 

I might show how the laws given by the great law- 
giver to the Hebrew race led to the abolition of slavery 
among them long before it ceased to exist among the 
surrounding nations. I might remind you that it 
was the enlightened Christian sentiment of England, 
communicated to America and to the nations of Europe, 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 9 

that gradually resulted in the extinction of slavery and 
serfdom throughout the world. 

I might appeal to our liberal laws founded upon the 
liberal laws of England, and England's laws admittedly 
founded upon the Bible. I might ask: "Where has 
liberty her home to-day? Where is man most free?" 

Discussing the freedom of woman, I might show 
how Christianity has elevated womanhood to the digni- 
fied position she occupies on the earth to-day ; how from 
a condition worse than slavery it exalted and ennobled 
her, so that it would seem a strange thing for any wom- 
an in our day to take sides with infidelity. (Ap- 
plause.) 

In that connection the colonel told the story of 
Adami and Heva, parallel with the story of Adam and 
Eve (a most beautiful story) ; how the great Brahma 
placed the man and the woman on the island of Ceylon, 
where everything was beautiful; such flowers, such 
verdure, such forests, such birds, such music where 
the breeze, wafting through the branches", made of 
every tree a thousand ^Eolian harps ! 

There they had their courtship, with the nightingale 
singing, and the stars shining, and the flowers bloom- 
ing, and they fell in love. 

I suppose the nightingale sang, and the stars shone, 
and the flowers bloomed for Adam and Eve in Eden, 
too, but the colonel neglected to say so. (Laughter.) 

Adami and Heva were married by the Supreme 
Brahma, and he said to them: "Remain here; you 
must never leave this island." 

All went well in that beautiful courtship and mat- 
rimony until one day Adami, looking over across the 
narrow and short isthmus which connected what is now 
an island with the main land, saw in a mirage a beauti- 
ful expanse of country ; such glory in the mountains, 
such enchantment in the valleys, such rivers, such 



IO REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

splendor in the sky ! and he told Heva that beyond the 
island was something- far more beautiful than Ceylon. 

The result was natural, and they took early steps to 
explore ; but the moment they got over, with a crash 
the narrow neck of land fell into the sea ; there was no 
possible return to the island ; and, looking before them, 
the mirage had passed, and there was nothing but bleak 
desolation. 

Then they heard the voice of Brahma cursing them 
to the lowest hell, and Adami said: " Curse me, but 
curse not her; I only am to blame." And the Brahma 
said: " I will spare her, but I will curse thee." Then 
Heva uttered the appeal of love : " If thou wilt not 
spare him, spare neither me, for I love him." And he 
said ; " I will spare you both and protect you and your 
children forever." 

A most fascinating story ; and if the Bible was merely 
a romance, perhaps something like that would have 
been in it. 

That was the most effective thing in Colonel Inger- 
soll's lecture. It captivated his entire audience, con- 
firming the unbeliever and almost converting the 
Christian; and I have told it in my extemporaneous 
way as best I could, that it might have the fullest 
effect upon you. I wish that I could devote the hour 
to the analysis of that story. It is a much more beau- 
tiful story than the story of Adam and Eve. 

And the colonel said a little about its chronology. 
As to that, I know nothing, except what he told me. 
He said that all the commentators disagreed with him 
as to the chronology of the two stories. Well, if all the 
commentators give evidence on one side, and the colonel 
on the other, as a good lawyer he must admit that the 
preponderance of evidence is against him. (Applause. ) 

After reading the mistakes of Ingersoll, entitled 
"The Mistakes of Moses," I would not hesitate to ac- 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. II 

cept the evidence of all the commentators in preference 
to the opinion of one Ingersoll. (Laughter.) And if 
it were said by two Ingersolls, I would be sure it was 
wrong. (Laughter. ) It would make assurance doubly 
sure. I might safely deny it on the ground that 
Colonel Ingersoll never yet got the statement of an 
historical fact right. (Laughter.) 

And, though the story is more beautiful than the 
story of Adam and Eve, perhaps the story of Adam 
and Eve is more natural. Perhaps the woman did 
tempt Adam and perhaps Adam did yield, and perhaps 
he was mean enough, when he found that he was dis- 
covered, to throw all the blame on the woman ; and if 
he was so mean as to do that, it only goes to show that 
he was the true ancestor of many of his descendants. 
(Laughter.) 

But I will refer to the story later, for we will come 
to a place where it fits in well. 

The colonel spoke of the liberty of the child, and 
that was the most remarkable thing in his lecture. But 
he had his audience so charmed with the magic of his 
eloquence that it seemed all right. 

His idea of the government of childhood and the 
home was that you should let the child do as it pleases. 
Let it get up when it pleases in the morning ; let it go 
to bed when it pleases at night ; let it eat when it wants 
to, what it wants, and as much as it wants ; and leave 
your pocketbook on the table, and say to your child : 
"There is the pocketbook; help yourself." 

That seems very remarkable, but it is what the 
colonel said. Suppose you try that. (Laughter.) 
Try it for one week. 

It is related that an ardent follower of Colonel In- 
gersoll did try it once, and he said : " Now, my son, I 
am going away, and you can do as you please when 
I am gone. I leave my pocketbook on the table, and 



12 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

you can do as you please." He was gone about a 
week. He came back at night, and after stumbling 
over a wagon in the hall and being bitten by the bull- 
dog, which his boy in the unbiased exercise of his wis- 
dom had bought, and meeting with other uncomfortable 
experiences, he looked for his pocketbook to pay a press- 
ing bill, but found it empty. 

Some time later he was asked what he thought of 
Colonel Ingersoll's idea of the government of chil- 
dren. "Well," he said, "it is very pleasant to listen 
to, but the man is a born idiot who will try to follow it 
the second time. " (Laughter.) 

"Liberty is my religion," said Colonel Ingersoll, 
and that is the kind of liberty he believes in— to do 
about as you please. 

Perhaps a good many men would like to have it that 
way, but society has thought differently, and has con- 
cluded that it is hardly safe to have things that way, 
and has established laws— the municipal government in 
Waco seems to be quite necessary, and laws governing 
the State and laws of the home. 

Now, follower of Colonel Ingersoll, disciple of his 
faith, take him at his word, try it just once. Really, 
now, do. Put some of his beautiful theories that you 
applauded so vociferously into every-day practice in the 
government of your home. Do not be too easily dis- 
couraged, but give it a good fair trial. (Laughter.) 
Try it for a whole week, and then sit down, and think 
it over, and see how you feel. (Laughter.) 

I imagine you will feel somewhat as did the rheu- 
matic who applied to the Christian scientist for cure. 
There are Christian scientists and Christian scientists. 
Some rational and some of the idiotic kind. There 
are a great many humbuggeries calling themselves 
Christian, bringing discredit upon Christianity, and 
that idiotic kind of Christian science is one of them. 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 1 3 

After the treatment the scientist stood off so that he 
might take a good look at his patient, and said, " Now, 
sir, how do you feel?" The rheumatic replied: "I 
feel like an unmitigated fool; what's your bill?" 
(Laughter. ) 

If you cannot govern your home by that kind of 
philosophy, how do you expect God to govern a uni- 
verse by it? 

Well, that is Colonel Inger soil's idea of liberty, and 
that is his idea of a proper God ; a God who will allow 
you to do as you like ; a God — keep in mind now the 
story of Adami and Heva and the colonel's hearty 
approval of the great Brahma, for right here is where 
it fits in well — a God who starts out with a serious 
mistake, changes his mind three times in three minutes 
(laughter), and goes back on his word twice in the 
same time. (Laughter.) First, "I curse you both," 
and then, "I curse you, but I will not curse Heva," 
and finally, " I will not curse either of you, but will 
bless you and your children forever." 

That is the colonel's idea of a proper God: a God 
that he can argue with and show him where he is wrong. 
(Laughter.) 

Well, that may be a very nice sort of a God to put 
into a romance, but it is hardly the kind of a God to ' 
govern a universe. The old story of Adam and Eve is 
better, after all, than the story of Adami and Heva. 



III. 

Some Free Thinking. 

There is the freedom of the intellect. 

The lecturer saw pass before him a panorama. He 
saw the man in the dug-out, the lowest order of human 
intelligence, and he had religion, the colonel said. 
True, for the Creator has put the vital spark of religion 
into the breast of every human being under the sun, 
whether the Hottentot in Africa or the wisest man in 
enlightened America; even in the heart of Colonel 
Ingersoll. 

He saw the dug-out, then the rowboat, next the 
ship with sails, and then he saw the mighty steamer 
leave New York and plough through the great deep into 
the harbor of Liverpool without missing one beat of 
her great throbbing heart ; and he compared that to the 
progress of the race to the highest order of man, which 
he supposed to be the free thinker. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I, too, had a dream. I saw 
strange things pass before my vision. I saw the man 
in the dug-out, the lowest order of human intelligence, 
and I said, this man has religion in his heart, for the 
Creator has put it there, a living name in the heart of 
every man ; but as for his intellect, he knows no more 
about religion than Colonel Ingersoll. (Laughter. ) 

And I saw another man, a man standing with bared 
brow and looking up intently into the heavens ; and I 
saw him grasp the lightning in his hand and bring it 
down and chain it for the uses of man ; and I saw him 
flash it across a continent, and thither and thither, the 






REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 1 5 

bearer of his thoughts ; and I heard him bid it flash 
through the mighty deep to the other hemisphere mes- 
sages of peace, of war, of joy, of sorrow ; and I saw him 
chain it to mighty chariots and send them speeding 
over continents bearing the commerce of nations ; and 
I saw him put it to all subtle and strange uses past 
comprehension, beyond the dreams of fancy; and I 
said, this is the man who says nothing is unknown and 
nothing is unknowable ; this is the evolution of the man 
in the dug-out ; this is the man of the Christian civiliza- 
tion (applause) ; this is the man who says, I will not 
only take what things God gives me from his hand and 
discover and apply their uses, but I will know and com- 
mune with God himself. 

This is the spirit of progress ; this is the true spirit 
of investigation. This is the spirit of liberty. 

The true investigator, the man with the really scien- 
tific mind and instinct, says : " I will not stop with 
knowledge of the lower order of things ; I will extend 
and prosecute my investigations to the higher. Yea, I 
will reach up to the very highest." It is the genius of 
science to penetrate into the unknown. 

This was not the spirit of the lecturer. He describes 
himself as a passenger on board a ship, not knowing 
whence he came or whither he is going, but intending 
to have all the enjoyment he can while on the journey 
and be on good terms with the passengers. This is 
all very good so far as it goes, but it does not go far 
enough. 

There are wise young men in my audience this even- 
ing who say they will not believe anything which they 
cannot understand. They do not understand the cir- 
culation of the blood in the human system, nor the mar- 
vellous intricacies of the human eye, nor what is the life, 
nor what is the mind ; what determines the processes of 
thought, nor even the life that is in the smallest blade 



1 6 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

of grass or the tiniest green leaf of the forest, yet they 
would understand all the mysteries of God's being and 
purposes; and if there is one little thing in God's great 
plan they do not understand, they think the mighty 
foundations of religion are shaken. (Applause. ) 

Marvellous the wisdom of infidelity. (Laughter.) 

I am reminded of the good old Quaker who heard a 
man talking somewhat in that way. He said he would 
not believe anything he had not seen, or that had not 
been seen by anyone else, so far as he knew. The old 
Quaker said: "Young man, did thee ever see thee 
own brains?" " I don't know that I ever did." " Does 
thee know anyone who ever saw thee own brains?" 
"I really don't know that I do." "Does thee believe 
thee has any?" (Laughter.) 

Man is endowed by the Creator with six senses, usu- 
ally supposed to be five. There are the senses of sight, 
hearing, taste, touch, and smell, and the sixth, the sense 
of the infinite, the sense of religion ; and no man is pos- 
sessed of the five senses without being endowed with 
the other. 

Man is possessed of no sense that has not its com- 
plete response in nature. For the sense of smell there 
is the air filled with the perfume of flowers ; for the 
sense of hearing, a universe filled with the songs of 
birds, the laughter of the stream, the cadence of the 
sea, and all sweet music and harmonies ; for the sense 
of sight, the boundless deep, the azure mountains, the 
watered valley, the sunset, the afterglow, the myriad 
varieties of flowers, and every conceivable form of 
beauty. For the sense of the infinite there is God. 

Since nature thus testifies of God, it appeals to the 
intellect of man to find Him as strongly as it appeals to 
the mind to discover the laws and forces of the material 
world, and it is ignorance and supineness to say that 
God is unknowable. 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 1 7 

Colonel Ingersoll says: " Man must think. " Yes, 
man must think, and when he thinks, it occurs to him 
that there are marvellous evidences of design in this 
world; that where there is design there must be a de- 
signer ; that there cannot be thought without a thinker ; 
and he concludes that there must be somewhere a great 
intelligent mind presiding over the destinies of the uni- 
verse and having a care for his creatures. 

God has spoken to man through three revelations, 
by which he has made himself known. One I believe 
to be the written revelation, the Bible, apprehended 
and understood only by diligent and devout research 
and investigation. Another is the revelation of nature, 
made plain by the painstaking researches of science. 
The other is conscience, the spiritual sense, the voice of 
God in the soul. 

Neither is complete without the other, and neither 
is perfectly understood by any man, although con- 
science is the plainer. Conscience is the first revela- 
tion ; it is the revelation to the man in the dug-out ; it 
is an essential revelation still, and always will be. 
Without its aid, without the moral and spiritual sense 
to interpret them, the other revelations would be unin- 
telligible and worthless. 

Much as I love and revere the word of God, I believe 
that the revelation of nature is the greater. It, too, is 
the voice of God. All three revelations are His truth, 
and, rightly interpreted, one cannot contradict the 
other. If the correct conclusions of science contradict 
the Bible, then the Bible is wrong, or rather our inter- 
pretations of the Bible are wrong, and must be made 
right. Therefore I am not afraid of the scientific doc- 
trine of evolution, nor of any other doctrine of science, 
and the Christian church is not afraid. Let the fullest 
light be thrown on. If it be the truth, let it be estab- 
lished, and the Bible will stand with it. (Applause.) 



1 8 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

I believe in the Christian religion and the Bible, its 
great text-book, not because my father and mother be- 
lieved them, but because they are established upon 
foundations of reason as firm as Gibraltar. (Applause. ) 
The sons of the church are among the ablest and 
most tireless and enthusiastic investigators in the realm 
of science. And it is by the most exhaustive re- 
searches in multitudinous directions that the founda- 
tions of belief in the Scriptures have been laid deep in 
the minds of scholars and approved by the best think- 
ers of the age. Christianity courts investigation and 
the freest thinking. 



IV. 

Mind. 

I consider myself as free a thinker as Colonel Inger- 
soll. (Applause. ) 

I believe in giving to the other man the largest pos- 
sible freedom of thought and belief, and I ask that the 
same freedom be accorded to me. 

But the eloquent lecturer is not so tolerant of my 
beliefs as I am of his. (Applause. ) He charges those 
who differ with him with being ignorant, narrow, big- 
oted, and deficient in intellect. He calls them such 
hard names as "hypocrites" and "fools." 

He tells us that the difference between the Christian 
and the self-styled freethinker (as if the only free 
thinking is thinking his way of thinking) is only a ques- 
tion of the size and quality of the brain, at which his 
hearers applauded, as if that settled it. 

If that is it, — if it is only a question of brains, — I 
accept the challenge, and we will see whether the pre- 
ponderance of brains is on the infidel or on the Chris- 
tian side. 

Of infidels, there were the great Voltaire and. Hume 
and Tom Paine, of some generations past. Our own 
times have produced three eminent scientists, skeptical 
but not altogether infidel, and one other, Colonel Robert 
Ingersoll, all the product of Christian homes; two, if 
not three of them, the sons of Christian ministers. 

If there are other very great infidels in our day 
(and there are some) , they are so very few you will 
have to think a little to recall a name. (Laughter.) 



20 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

Looking back to other generations, we see here and 
there one great thinker on the infidel side. 

It would take the day and the night to call the great 
names in the Christian list (applause), not pietists, but 
thinkers and doers of the most rugged kind. 

Many of them were profoundly Christian, many 
others inconsistent and even grossly unchristian in 
their lives, but all giving intellectual assent to the truths 
of the religion of Christ. That is exactly the point. 
Piety, morality, have nothing to do with the question 
at this point of the discussion. It is a question of in- 
tellectual assent only. It is a question of brains. 
Does the intellect of the world approve the Christian 
religion? 

On the Christian side, I name the great Sir Isaac 
Newton, the father of modern philosophy and the in- 
ductive system; Locke, Agassiz, Herschel, Hitchcock, 
Dawson, Dana ; Columbus, possessing a new world in 
the name of the cross ; Cromwell, crushing a despot- 
ism and establishing the liberties of Britons for all 
time, his armies marching to victory while shouting 
Christian psalms; Wellington, conquering the great 
Napoleon, and Napoleon, confessing that Christ was 
the greater Conqueror; our sturdy forefathers land- 
ing from the Mayflozver in the name of liberty and re- 
ligion, to found an empire of freedom (applause) ; 
Washington, throwing off the yoke of tyranny that a 
great republic might find birth on this Western hemis- 
phere ; John Adams, Patrick Henry, the lover of free- 
dom ; nearly all the signers of the declaration of inde- 
pendence and framers of the constitution ; Franklin, 
statesman, scientist, philosopher, patriot; Clay, Web- 
ster, the great Lincoln (applause), the emancipator; 
Seward, Grant, the modern genius of war; Sherman, 
Meade, Thomas, of the North; the great Lee (ap- 
plause), the courtly Christian gentleman as well as 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 21 

mighty warrior; Stonewall Jackson (applause), on the 
eve of battle spending the night behind his tent in 
prayer; Peabody, the philanthropist; Morse, invent- 
ing the electric telegraph ; Cyrus Field, surmounting 
forty years of difficulties to lay the Atlantic cable, 
until, in the realization of his faith, the hemispheres 
clasp hands (applause) ; Garfield, Blaine, Thurman ; 
almost all the great names of American history ; Living- 
ston, the missionary explorer; Stanley, his great suc- 
cessor, beginning his mighty task almost a doubter, 
returning to declare that the only hope of Africa is 
the Christian missionary. (Applause.) In literature, 
Shakespeare (infidels claim him but they cannot main- 
tain the claim), Milton, Scott, Bunyan, Macaiilay, 
Emerson, Carlyle, Lowell, Victor Hugo, Longfellow, 
Whittier, Tennyson. Among living men, in jurispru- 
dence, nearly all the great jurists of the world ; in med- 
icine, the great physicians; in statesmanship, nearly 
every really great name in every civilized nation on jthe 
globe (applause) ; in our own country, the President, the 
ex-Presidents, and every name considered a Presiden- 
tial possibility; in Germany, Bismarck (applause), the 
Iron Chancellor, profoundly religious ; in Great Britain, 
Salisbury and his ministry; most of the great Liberal 
headers ; and last, the grand old man without a peer on 
the earth — the great Gladstone (applause); great in 
statesmanship, great in letters, great in theology, great- 
est of all men in eloquence, great in scholarship, great 
in patriotism, great in love of freedom and the human 
race, great in manhood, great Christian (applause) ; a 
statesman not for England alone, nor for all of Great 
Britain only, but a statesman for all mankind (applause), 
broad enough to embrace in his sympathies and in his 
enlightened statesmanship the human race. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Colonel Ingersoll is himself a product of the Chris- 



22 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

tian religion ; and I am glad he is, for I am one of those 
who believe he is doing a great deal of good in this 
world, making men think ; and when men think, they 
will come out right. 

I don't want you to take the woven cloth of Colonel 
Ingersoll's very fine ideas of divine government and 
put it about you as a cloak to excuse you for doing 
wrong or to smother your conscience into insensibility ; 
but if you are an honest doubter you are one of my 
kind ; if you are an honest doubter, as sure as there is 
an eternal God in the universe you will come to the 
truth, for that is what every honest heart is seeking. 

If you are a dishonest doubter, my only hope for 
you is that somehow I may make you honest. (Ap- 
plause.) Then you will investigate, and you will come 
to right ideas. You will investigate, not with a prede- 
termined purpose to condemn religion, but with deter- 
mination to discover if it be the truth, and if it is the 
truth, to accept it. 

Yes, Colonel Ingersoll is himself a product of the 
Christian religion, the son of a Christian minister and 
of a Christian mother (applause), brought up sur- 
rounded by the influences of a Christian home and by 
the influences of a Christian community, as are you, 
my doubting friend ; brought up under the influences 
of a mighty and enlightened Christian civilization. 
(Applause.) 

Why, a man cannot live on this earth in any civ- 
ilized part of it without being profoundly affected by 
the religion of Christ. 

A man may get a prejudice against the sun and say: 
" I don't like it ; it is too hot for me ; " or, " It reveals 
things that I don't like to see or to have known; I am 
opposed to it, and I will live without the heat of the 
sun;" and he shuts himself in a dark cave and kindles a 
fire. But science tells us that exactly the quantity of 
heat which is given by that fire was taken from the sun 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 23 

to form the fuel of which it is made ; and so, in the 
gloom of that cave, he is as truly warmed by the sun as 
if basking in the noonday warmth of his rays. 

He says : " I will do without the light of the sun ;" 
and he draws down the shades and closes the shutters 
and lights a candle ; but science tells us that the light 
of that candle was originally taken from the sun ; and 
so, in his darkened room, he is still debtor to the sun 
for light. 

So it is with the enlightened freethinker of our day. 

In the first place, the liberty which he possesses and 
abuses he owes to the Christian religion (applause), 
that has been the mightiest champion for human free- 
dom on the earth for eighteen centuries. The moral- 
ity that he possesses is something which he inherited 
from his Christian parents and that he learned in his 
Christian home and which developed under the influ- 
ences of a Christian community in which he lived, 
though he opposed its Christian sentiment. 

This civilization is Christian. To prove it I chal- 
lenged infidelity the other day, since it was intellec- 
tual, since it was so fortunate as to possess all the 
scholarship and all the brains, to show its great insti- 
tutions of learning as against Christian Oxford, Cam- 
bridge, Harvard, Yale, and, literally, hundreds more 
in the civilized world, any one of which, I said, pos- 
sessed in its faculty and corps of instructors almost as 
much brains as the entire infidel contingent. (Laugh- 
ter.) 

I charged that if infidelity had ever originated any 
great institution of learning or any great charity for 
the benefit of mankind, it failed to possess the vital and 
vitalizing power to keep it alive. 

My critic in the daily press produced two, and only 
two. One, the University of Virginia, founded, he 
said, by Thomas Jefferson. I have since shown that 
Jefferson was not an infidel. He was only one of its 



24 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

founders. It was founded by the State of Virginia. 
It is now a Christian institution (applause), presided 
over by that excellent and devout Presbyterian, Mr. 
Thornton, and the members of its faculty are pro- 
found Christian believers. (Applause.) 

He produced one more — poor little Girard College. 
(Laughter. ) I had forgotten that ; but I remembered 
it the minute I saw it in print. (Laughter.) 

It was founded by Stephen Girard, a very estimable 
gentleman who hated sectarianism. So do I. 

He put into its constitution, or charter, a provision 
that no minister of any sect should ever belong to its 
faculty or even enter its grounds. 

Now I will tell you how I happen to remember it. 
Not one of you would remember it ; even infidels would 
not remember it, or Girard College would itself be little 
more than a memory but for this. Institutions do not 
live of themselves, and as infidels would not interest 
themselves in the beneficent work of Girard College, it 
naturally fell into the hands of the Christians, and, 
though the provision of its charter excluding minis- 
ters from its faculty and its grounds is strictly ob- 
served, Girard College is a Christian college to-day. 
(Applause.) .... 

The Christian religion has always shown vitality 
and the power of development. It is progressive. 
There is in it room and incentive for research and 
originality. There is in it liberty and great diversity 
of opinion. But the distinguished lecturer condemns 
it as a cast-iron system which makes all men believe 
exactly alike. In a later lecture he condemns it for 
its hundreds of sects having as many divergent beliefs, 
each division warring against the beliefs of the other. 

And yet he says that there has been no progress in 
religion. (Laughter.) I should think that quite pro- 
gress enough to occur between lectures. (Laughter.) 
But the Colonel is hard to satisfy. (Laughter.) 



V. 

Humanity. 

We have now come to the final question : 

Is Christianity or infidelity the better exemplar of 
love and human brotherhood? 

Infidelity condemns faith and extols works. It 
laughs at believing, but loudly applauds doing. What 
has it done? I know not where are its works of right- 
eousness, or where it has builded its monuments of 
charity, its houses for human refuge. 

Christianity has certainly done somewhat to exem- 
plify the great Scriptural doctrine of the universal 
brotherhood of man and that love which it declares to 
be the fulfilling of the law. 

I entertain a stranger in the city where is my home. 
Introducing him first to the lower part of the city, I 
show him the humble missions near the wharves. One 
Christian denomination alone has nearly a score of 
them. I point out to him the tall spire of Trinity 
Church on Broadway, the great business thoroughfare, 
and fronting busy Wall Street, and describe Trinity's 
great property, worth a hundred millions. I show 
him the Chamber of Commerce, and inform him that 
when the plague of yellow fever laid its deadly hand on 
your sister city, New Orleans, in one day this great 
commercial body raised one hundred thousand dollars 
for her relief, and on a scrutiny of the list it was found 
that more than ninety per cent, of the amount was given 
by Christian men who had already responded generously 
to appeals for the same cause from the churches. 



26 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

I show him the new Clearing House, and tell him that 
of the presidents of the great banking institutions com- 
posing its membership and representing billions of dol- 
lars, after extracting the few Hebrew members, nearly 
all are Christian men, including the king of American 
finance, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, who is a devoted and 
active Christian philanthropist. 

He asks: "What is that other great new building 
towering above its neighbors, twenty stories high?" 
"That is the American Tract Society Building." I 
show him the Newsboys' Lodging House, the Howard 
Mission, the Home for the Friendless, and the Chil- 
dren's Aid Society schools. 

He asks : " What noble pile is that?" " That is the 
Cooper Institute. " " And what is the great red build- 
ing covering a square?" " The Bible House." I show 
him the beautiful Grace Church, the ivy twining grace- 
fully about her Gothic arches, her graceful spire a si- 
lent monitor, her melodious chimes mingling strangely 
with the tumultuous discords of the street. I show 
him the Grace Parish House, the Methodist Book Con- 
cern, the Presbyterian Building, the six Young Men's 
Christian Association buildings, the United Charities 
Building, the House of Industry, Columbia College, 
and tell of the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden libraries. 

I point out the many homes for the aged and or- 
phaned and crippled and blind, the great St. Luke's 
and other hospitals, the eye and ear hospitals, the Pris- 
on Mission, the Medical Mission, the Flower Mission, 
the Fruit Mission, the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals, the Red Cross Society, and I tell 
him that there are hundreds more like them in the city, 
all monuments of Christian benevolence. (Applause.) 

I show him the new St. Luke's Hospital, the new 
Columbia University, and the new Cathedral of St. 
John the Divine, now rearing their colossal heads under 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 2J 

the mason's hand, and when completed to be greater 
and grander than the old. 

I tell of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch churches, 
with a wealth almost equal to Trinity, and point out the 
other great churches as we pass, and tell him th^t there 
are more than six hundred of them in the town and 
nearly as many more across the river in Brooklyn, 
or a grand total of eleven hundred and fifty-four in 
the Greater New York. (Applause.) 

In all this the stranger has been much interested, but 
silent. But now he says to me : " There is a distin- 
guished citizen of your city, Colonel Robert Ingersoll, 
an eloquent man, whose wonderful teachings and ex- 
pressions of love for my kind I have had great pleasure 
in reading. With unrivalled eloquence he has for many 
years urged his plan for the relief and betterment of 
the race upon multitudes of enthusiastic hearers, and 
in this he has had many eminent predecessors in your 
city ever since it was founded, and he now has many 
disciples ; indeed, I am told that the number of those 
whose belief is practically as his has become so great 
that the Christian system is falling rapidly to decay. 
Will you kindly point out to me the monuments of his 
philosophy, which appears to me much better than the 
old Christian philosophy which he declares to be a fail- 
ure and obsolete?" 

And I reply : " I had not thought of that ; but now, 
coming to think of the monuments of his belief in this 
town, there are none. (Applause.) 

" Oh, yes, since I think of it, there was one ; on the 
east side of town was founded one called the German 
Hospital, in which no minister and no Bible should 
ever enter ; but a few years ago a committee from its 
managers came to the ministers and asked if they 
would not please give them a little help, as they were 
in sore straits for money to meet expenses, and it was 



28 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

a good cause ; and the ministers said : ' Yes, we will 
help you ; it is for the sick. ' Since then, as a monu- 
ment (laughter), I have not heard much of it." 

There, ladies and gentlemen, is a demonstration. 
(Applause.) Disbelief is as old as the Christian reli- 
gion ; it has had its great advocates who for hundreds 
of years have presented its panaceas for human ills as 
much better than anything Christianity had to offer. 
It, too, has had its multitudes of followers; it has 
loudly professed its love for the human race, and that 
love it has proclaimed as its religion; but there in the 
city of my home is the demonstration. On the one 
hand, a demonstration of power and munificence and 
helpfulness for the race (applause) ; on the other, a 
demonstration of impotence, of failure, of utter use- 
lessness. (Applause.) 

The great Master has prescribed the test, " By their 
fruits ye shall know them. " By that test the Christian 
religion will stand against the world. (Applause.) 

Man must think, says Colonel Ingersoll. Yes, and 
when he thinks it occurs to him that when a man of 
Colonel Ingersoll 's masterful powers has been preach- 
ing for thirty years to crowding multitudes truths 
grander, sublimer, more helpful to the human race (for- 
sooth) than all the teachings of Christianity, and yet 
you cannot find one gambler whom he has made to 
forsake his nefarious trade, one thief that he has made 
an honest man, one poor besotted drunkard that he has 
clothed with reason and the dignity of ennobled man- 
hood, there must be something radically wrong in his 
philosophy. (Applause.) 

Once, standing on the platform of Chickering Hall 
in New York, I flung out this challenge to infidelity : 
Let it bring one poor wreck of humanity rescued, lifted 
from degradation to noble life by the teachings of all 
the infidels in New York, and for everyone so brought 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 29 

I would produce a hundred men lifted from the lowest 
depths to honest manhood by the work of a single 
humble missionary of Christ. (Applause.) 

I stood with the list in my hand and invited the 
newspaper press of the city, there represented by a 
number of reporters, to investigate the genuineness of 
the Christian's hundred and infidel's one if the chal- 
lenge were accepted. (Applause.) 

Infidelity never accepted the challenge. 

Again I charge that all the combined forces of unbe- 
lief or of irreligion have utterly and eternally failed to 
bring relief to suffering humanity ; that it has produced 
no great institutions of learning and no great charities 
or asylums for the succor of mankind, or if it has ever 
produced them, it has had no power as an organized 
force to keep them alive. 

As a vital and vitalizing force it is utterly and hope- 
lessly imbecile. 

Imagine hanging here a map of the globe. Now 
mark on the map with blackened brush the nations 
which are the lowest in intelligence, the most degraded, 
and in every respect behind the age. Look: they 
are the nations where Christianity has found the 
least success in the presentation of its belief. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Now come, artist, and paint the colors of the sun- 
light on the nations of the earth that are foremost, 
that are the most advanced in morality, in science, in 
intelligence and art, in commerce, in freedom, in the 
prosperity and happiness of the citizen, in everything 
which goes to the making of a great and noble people. 
See! you have marked out on the map the nations 
which are the Christian nations (applause), and the 
lighter shade is where the nations are the most Chris- 
tian, where the Bible has freest course and is the most 
believed. (Applause.) 



30 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

And that is true every time. There is no exception. 
I challenge any infidel to show it differently. 

All over the map of the world the shades are light 
or dark exactly in proportion to the progress or absence 
of the Christian religion. 

Take that map home with you. Hang it in the en- 
lightened halls of the mind. Study it in the secret 
chambers of the soul. 

Is it an accident? Did it all come by chance? To 
Colonel Ingersoll, to whose mind the marvellous mech- 
anism of the universe is an accident, the chance theory 
in this case also is doubtless eminently satisfactory. 
(Laughter.) 

But the mind of man in its normal condition is not 
so constituted. (Laughter.) 

If the agnostic has something for me to believe and 
infidelity has something to take the place of the Bible 
and Christian belief, something better, something more 
helpful to the human race, let it produce the fruits be- 
fore I am called upon to renounce that which my own 
heart and the united testimony of millions of the best 
of every generation for nineteen centuries tell me is 
ennobling and blessed in its influence, that which has 
in every age and in every clime regenerated and exalted 
and glorified mankind. (Applause.) 

Let it bring its sons from far and its daughters from 
the ends of the earth ennobled and sanctified under its 
power, and I will believe it. 

Until then I stand by the old faith, which, though 
old, is not yet obsolete and has not lost its old-time 
power to bless the sons of men. (Applause.) 

I remember that some years ago when the revised 
edition of the King James version of the Bible had been 
prepared and was in press, Colonel Ingersoll, in a lec- 
ture delivered in my city, made the statement that the 
Bible was an obsolete book ; but the next week the new 



REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 3 1 

edition was put on the market, and there was sold 
within four days in America and England three million 
copies of that " obsolete" book. (Applause.) 

Such is the impotency of the assaults of falsehood 
upon the truth. 

But before this audience need I speak for the Christ 
whose religion has been and is the most potent power 
on earth, overthrowing kingdoms, tearing down mon- 
archies, revolutionizing governments and laws and sys- 
tems, changing social conditions in the interests of 
human freedom, the liberty of man, woman, and child, 
and not only tearing down, but building up on the ruins 
better systems, freer governments, and happier peo- 
ples ; the Christ the history of whose religion has been 
one grand triumphal advance down the ages, conquering 
on its way hostile nations and systems and effete phi- 
losophies, and commanding them to wheel into line in 
the march of advanced morality and civilization ; the 
Christ by whose cradle the civilized world pauses to 
mark the passage of the years and the centuries, writ- 
ing its years " Anno Domini," the year of our Lord, and 
whose name the civilized world delights to claim for its 
own, calling itself " Christendom, " and the era of its 
vast achievements the " Christian era"? (Applause.) 

Need I speak for the faith that has been the stimu- 
lus and the inspiration of the best thought and litera- 
ture of the centuries ; the faith that has founded the 
world's great libraries, her best and greatest institu- 
tions of learning, her hospitals, and asylums ; the faith 
that has won the assent and allegiance of the noblest 
minds; that has given to the world her purest morality, 
her most humane laws, her broadest philanthropy, her 
grandest architecture, her finest art, her sublimest 
poetry, her divinest music, her loveliest womanhood, 
her grandest manhood? (Applause.) 

Need I speak for the faith against whose granite- 



32 REPLY TO INGERSOLL. 

like front the fierce assaults of infidelity for almost two 
thousand years have been but as the beating of the surf 
upon the shores of a continent? (Applause.) 

On yonder Atlantic shores the surf has beat for ages, 
but we need not go there to-day to see if the shore is 
still there. Upon the calm shores of the Christian faith 
the wild surf of infidelity has roared and thundered and 
beaten and broken for nineteen hundred years, but the 
shore is still there. Sometimes the surf has roared so 
loudly and rolled so high that men have trembled and 
men have fallen in the wave, but the shore has not 
trembled, and the shore abides. The surf beats yet, 
and the surf will beat, but eternally serene the shore 
shall last, the shore shall last. (Applause.) 

Note. The lecture seems to speak disparagingly of Girard 
College. This was uttered in extempore speech, and may con- 
vey a wrong impression. This institution never sought financial 
support, as Girard's endowment was ample. The requirements 
of the trust were not anti-Christian but only anti-sectarian, and 
it came under distinctively Christian control because only Chris- 
tians were sufficiently interested in its beneficent work to look 
after it. The name "college " as applied to it is a misnomer, as 
it is merely a great educational orphan asylum, its beneficiaries 
being limited to children between the ages of eight to sixteen. 
It may, therefore, be called "poor " and "little " considered as an 
educational and intellectual factor when compared with the great 
universities, but as now conducted, it is a most useful and ad- 
mirable institution. — Author. 



"A bright, popular, and powerful refutation of trie fallacies of the 
noted sceptic. It cannot fail to be attractive and useful." — E. G. Andrews, 
D.D., LL.D., Bishop M. E. Church. 

" Generous, pertinent, and pungent ; and if it does not gain access to the 
intelligence of his hearers, it will be because their intelligence is sitting with 
closed doors." — C. H. Parkhurst, D.D., LL.D., New York City. 

. " Chickering .Hall was crowded to the utmost to hear this lecture, 
scores having waited for two hours in the rain before the doors were 
opened. . . . Great applause greeted his retorts, men and women even 
stamping on the floor to swell the sound." — New York Herald, December 
5, 1898. 

" I usually hesitate to heartily commend a lecture in reply to Ingersoll, 
as I think that often such replies do more harm than good ; but I certainly 
think that Mr. Colcord's answer to Ingersoll is an exception. It is bright, 
sensible, convincing, logical. It carries with it its own commendation, 
and any one that is fortunate enough to hear it ought to be immune from 
the Ingersoll disease forever afterwards." — Francis E. Clark, D.D., Presi- 
dent United Society of Christian Endeavor, Boston, Mass, 

" Skilled in language, witty and fearless, keen and entertaining. . . . 
He has the humorous faculty and pathos in his heart instead of his 
brain. . . . 

" Ingersoll was applauded, but cJieers greeted the sallies of Colcord." — 
New York World, December 3, 1898. 

" Kindly in spirit, incisive in utterance, and conclusive in logic. It 
will help thousands." — Robert S. MacArthur, D.D., LL.D., Pastor Cal- 
vary Baptist Church, New York. 

a Centre shots that hit the bull's-eye every time, and ring a bell." 
— Madison C. Peters, D.D., New York. 

" I think it admirable ! He made a fair field for ah open fight, and 
has made it very clear that the victory is not with the infidel." — B. P. 
Raymond, D.D., LL.D., President Wesleyan University. 

" The lecture is really wonderful. "— S. T. Willis, D.D., Pastor, 169th 
St., Church of the Disciples of Christ (or Christian Church), New York. 

".Clear reasoning, beautified by charming rhetoric and clever wit, was 
his weapon."— isVw/i'/y/j Eagle (New York). 

"The slaughter of Ingersoll . . . Upon his own line of argument 
he has easily confounded him, thumbs down. In Dr. Colcord's hands 
Ingersoll fell an easy victim, where he nailed him to the cross of his own 
planting. That lecture was a great success." — John L. N. Hunt, LL.D., 
for three terms President Board of Education, New York City. 

" Capital ! I do not see how it could be better. It answers Ingersoll 
most thoroughly from his own standpoint. . , , Simply overwhelming." — 
O. O. Howard, Major-General U. S, Army (retired). 

" Samuel Colcord delivered a lecture on the Fallacies of Ingersoll at 
Chickering Hall, New York, Sunday afternoon, that will be tart reading for 
deluded worshippers of ' Pope Bob.' . . , He nailed Ingersoll to the 
>ss of infidel sterility. . . ." Extracts from Editorial in Chicago limes- 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



« Of service to thoughtful people."- J/ Q Q-j Q QJ] g25 3 

" Clever, convincing, eloquent, and entt OT - • —, — o- 

ence in spite of the rain-storm. The lecturer received hearty and prolonged 
applause."— Brooklyn Citizen (New York). 

-Heard with keenest delight. It is bright, breezy brilliant full of 
facts charmingly and forcibly put, and of arguments ^V^f^^ 1 / 
marshalled."— W. T. McElveen, Ph.D. r President C. E. Local Union, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 

"It is strong, clear, eloquent, and convincing. Mr. Colcord is to be 
congratulated on having so successfully presented in a popular form a i ref- 
utation of errors so widely disseminated and so harmful I to the young 
men of onr land."— Rokert Russell Booth, D.D LL.D., one of the 
past Moderators of the Presbyterian General Assembly. 

-With telling effect and admirably adapted to open the eyes of 
many." — The Examiner, New York. 

"Vigorous, admirable, bright, strong, stimulating."— Samuel H. Vir- 
gin, D.D., LL.D., New York. 

« Mr. Samuel Colcord, who is well known in this community, and has 
been successful elsewhere, knows how to deal with the : versatile elusive 
and subtle unbeliever. His lecture is to the point and to the man , and 
he puts the point into the man by facts and arguments .that .are ^sharp 
and powerful ... He overwhelms Ingersoll with his own ridicule. — 
New York Observer* 

-Mr. Colcord's lecture should be delivered in every ^wn a R d city 
where Ingersoll speaks. He is fully equal to the emergency Hsogi, 
his powers of description, his irony, his pathos . . . ™f\*\^™ un 
usually fascinating and irresistible. "^Christian Evangelist, St. Louis. 

-Arguments admirably stated to influence young men." -Congrega- 
tionalisty Boston. 

- Meets him on his own ground, exposing his grotesque errors . . . 
with attractiveness, clearness? and remarkable force."- The Advance, 
Chicago. 

-A clean strike which floored all the Colonel's ninepins.»-i?m^» 
Standard-Union. 

-The lecture is serious and humorous, and is admirably fitted to meet 
the difficulties. . . ."— Chicago Standard. 

Zbe Waco, Geias, lecture 

"The finest compliment ever paid to a speaker in Waco was ft* 
great audience whichcame out during one of the J™' «"£%££ 
known in the history of the city ami completely filled the Grand Opera 
House to hear Dr. Colcord's second lecture on Ingersoll. ... it was aoe 
"ghted audience, and frequently interrupted the speaker with ^nthunastK 
annlanse The lecture combined brilliant wit with eloquence and a humor 
S h U oLn pro 'oked hearty laughter, and all at the expense olngersol 
who was badlv worsted both in wit and argument Dr. <-olcoia is an 
Tpeake" and'Veld the intense interest of his audience to the end. 
Texas Baptist Standard. 



